Gore Vidal on authors he hates

Mdriver1981

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William F. Buckley debates Ann Coulter (1998): • William F. Buckley deb...
Noam Chomsky debates Gore Vidal (1991): • Gore Vidal on authors ...
Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin • In Nazi Berlin: The S-...

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5 авг 2017

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Комментарии : 832

@bcdside 2 года назад

“Gore Vidal?! He hates everything!” - Dr. Frasier Crane

@darbyheavey406 10 месяцев назад

He loved Huey Long and LA has yet to recover economically.

@goldigit 6 лет назад

"Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met"... William Faulkner. Writers tend to be irrepressible bitches. The ability to discern the nuances of humanity with great precision carries with it the propensity to do so unkindly to any perceived competition.

@TheSmallKorner 4 года назад

"The greatest zircon in the diadem of American Literature..." jesus what a sentence

@TreeCurtis84 4 года назад

"I'll shall be in business as long as you're alive..." wow! He cursed Hitchens!

@Adkturn 6 лет назад

Vidal and Mailer buried the hatchet before they both checked out. Vidal did NOT hate Tennessee Williams, he even coined Williams' moniker "the Glorious Bird" to describe his art. They fell out in later years over religion and creative differences but Vidal most definitely did not hate him.

@steerpike66 6 лет назад

He and Capote had two things in common: they were both hopelessly addicted to the limelight and they both tore viciously at the hands that fed them.

@myimorata7678 4 года назад

"The greatest zircon in the diadem of American lit-rah-chah." Such invention always impresses me.

@LawrenceCarroll1234 5 лет назад

Most of the jabs here I believe (but certainly not all of them!) should be taken with a grain of salt. They are cocktail party fare, extremely witty and yes - even precise (usually) - but they are (like most cocktail-party fare) deliberately aiming at only the weaknesses of his rivals, and rarely extol any of the virtues. But that is what makes them hilarious. It is no different than the jabs, cuts, and put-downs at celebrity roasts. It also is one of Vidal’s assets that made him so lovable. Even some conservatives (if they were educated that is, and had a sense of humor and culture) loved him. I had an uncle - a extremely Irish, good natured wit , who - though conservative - loved his novels. I prefer his non-fiction myself.

@posteador 6 лет назад

Don't know much about this Vidal guy, but if the youtube commenters hate him, he must be worth a look.

@iconoclastvituperations9587 5 лет назад

"this vidal guy" …

@ednan9 4 года назад

This vidal guy- lol. You should research him- quite an American icon

@elizabethwinsor-strumpetqueen 4 года назад

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RL5Tb4eoTtA.html

@karl4834 3 года назад

Belated congratulations if you do check him out. Please put aside personal preferences, be they sexual or political ( however so related that they may not otherwise appear), and get back to us here what you thought

@SamvedIyer 2 года назад

Worth much more than a mere look.

@itsjustme4848 4 года назад

When Gore thought of Minnesota he thought of LaFollette, which is strange since LaFollette’s whole Progressive career took place in Wisconsin.

@adam2eve 4 года назад

Thank you for mentioning it. I thought the exact same when I heard it.

@ackamack101 4 года назад

His line about The Fly’s Help me Help me opening being the deceased Truman Capote is a good one, you must admit.

@nicheman3612 4 года назад

I think the lesson here is that if people you have met personally write books, you're less likely to enjoy them as you will see all their worst qualities as people into their writing.

@mattja52 5 лет назад

Gore Vidal is many things, acerbic, aristocratically arrogant, a sharp wit that can cut the marrow, unabridged confidence. He had a humor about himself that he didn't reveal only to a trusted few. He loved to read, he loved to write, he loved to learn, and he loved a good conversation. He was devastatingly honest, either you hate him or you love him, he was never boring. His critics may siren condemnation towards him and he would say, frankly, I don't give a damn, an imperfect man perfecting himself. Requiescat in Pace, my mentor.

@bobbywimsy6741 5 лет назад

mattja52 Ditto. A very apt and kindly appreciation for sure. He gave us a truer sense of American history. History that accounts for how human nature, with its many faults and foibles, actually played out. Myths, history as mutually agreed upon fables(Voltaire's phrase) triumphal recitations by "the winners" us never the whole story, the whole truth- Gore wrote aware of these factors and wound up, at least in his historical novels, writing more accurately, I believe, of what actually occurred. The intimacy is striking and very different than histories told with statistics, spin, myth, hagiography, fable, etc. Complete dispassion and objectivity are myths themselves. The mixture of subjective and objective is the best any of us can come to expressing history, if that is what we want to express.

@MrLowryfern 6 лет назад

Vidal especially hated writers more popular than himself..

@jeffw1267 5 лет назад

He wasn't as well-known or loved as he thought he was. Now, in 2018, you can buy a Vidal-signed hardback book for $15. That says it all. Nobody cares about him anymore.

@echorrhea 5 лет назад

jeffw1267 You’re right. That’s usually the case with most authors (and artists, for that matter). The years immediately after their death tend to see a decline in interest in their work, as well as an increase in negative criticism of their work and lives. Some pull back up after a decade or so. Most are fated to remain buried and forgotten.

@michaelterry1000 5 лет назад

Interesting, I just went on to eBay and confirmed what you said (even found lower). I also noticed that a David Cassidy signed book starts at around $35

@michaelgove9349 5 лет назад

Vidal especially hated writers who were better than himself - a wise decision allowing him almost limitless scope.

@rayjr62 5 лет назад

Bu he was right about Hemingway being nothing more than a Field and Stream writer who was an arrogant show-off. Comparing Hemingway's work to Thomas Mann or Joyce is ludicrous at best.

@meter85 5 лет назад

My man Gore has been trolling since back in the day. The grand master at throwing shade.

@MattSingh1 4 года назад

He was owned by Christopher Hitchens though- Vidal truly did go 'loco' post-9/11.

@jackarmstrong5645 4 года назад

@@MattSingh1 Absurd. It was Hitchens who went insane and abandoned his previous morality in favor of US exceptionalism and the right of the US to attack people for profit.

@jackarmstrong5645 4 года назад

@@timcountis9368 None as eloquent as Vidal. Many far more vocal.

@jorgejohnson451 6 лет назад

At 1:31 Vidal is talking about Hemingway and there’s a picture that has to be Oliver Stone or my name isn’t “Jorge Johnson.”

@jorgejohnson451 6 лет назад

Marge onthat Am I right? That’s either Oliver Stone or Stone is the reincarnation of Ernest Hemingway.

@tmac8892 6 лет назад

Jorge Johnson STFU jorge

@jorgejohnson451 6 лет назад

t mac FU

@Mdriver1981 6 лет назад

Jorge Johnson, a conscious decision on my part. It's a picture of Stone during his Hemingway phase.

@austinladd1569 6 лет назад

That Fitzgerald was 23 when he wrote "This Side of Paradise" is nothing short of astounding. And if anybody is under the impression that Gatsby is his best novel, I would charge that they must not have read Tender is the night, a mature, slow, impassioned novel that clashes with the glamour of Gatsby but lends to a real and honest tone while maintaining its stunning lyricism. On this alone I question his legitimacy as an honest critic.

@bestofthebest8898 6 лет назад

Austin Ladd Having once been a bigger Fitzgerald fan than I am now, although I’d still put him on my Mount Rushmore of American writers, I’d ask you to take another look at This Side of Paradise. Each read its weaknesses become more apparent. Tender is the Night is a favorite, though.

@JeffRebornNow 6 лет назад

Austin, I guess you're a better critic of Fitzgerald than Fitzgerald was himself. When he published 'Tender is the Night,' F. Scott wrote to Max Perkins apologizing to him for turning in such a bad novel. He said that he had been drinking heavily during it, and fighting with Zelda, and that those two things caused him to loose connection with the novel so that it wasn't a coherent whole -- a unity of form, style, pace, narrative that a truly great work must be. 'This Side of Paradise' and 'The Great Gatsby' are such unities. In an interview on 'Crossfire,' in the 1980s, Vidal echoed Fitzgerald's own criticism. He said that 'Tender is the Night' is an uneven novel but that it has "flashes of brilliance." You are, of course, entitled to your own opinion and to value it as the best of F.S.F.'s works, but to claim that Vidal is a dishonest critic because he doesn't share your opinion, you must start with Fitzgerald himself, accuse him of the same thing, and then go on to accuse a host of other literary critics of some repute, such as Edmund Wilson, who did not hate 'Tender is the Night' but did not love it unreservedly either. Writing, in December of 1934, to Phelps Putnam (of the publishing house) who hated the book, Wilson says, "I didn't think Scott's novel quite as bad as you seem to: the characters and the stories are cockeyed, but he got something real out of the marriage relationship..." I think Vidal is pretty much in the mainstream with his attitude toward the novel.

@JoachimderZweite 6 лет назад

Oh! We are flying high today!

@varghejo 6 лет назад

Dis youtube partna, ain't nobody read nothin

@johnbarrett5229 6 лет назад

Thanks for the tip. I will read Tender is the Night. : )

@rageforthemachine 4 года назад

Once again Gore displays his adamant belief that having a snarky comment to deliver is always a good substitute for actually knowing something about what you are speaking of.

@oppothumbs1 4 года назад

Gore is snarky but Hemingway and other writers a boring. As for Mailer, you can tell from this great debate that Mailer even if a fool would be more interesting that the staid Vidal. If a man’s legacy were to be gauged by the immediate response to his death, then Gore Vidal’s is very much in danger of being reduced to a succession of pithy and caustic sentences that will however rattle round the internet, and cheapened by the descent into hysteria that warped his political views in his final years. As quotable as he was-for good and for ill-it’s worth remembering Vidal the novelist, whose writing helped define the postwar American novel because his subject-whether he was writing about religious strife in ancient Rome or middle America as a gaudy soap opera-was always the United States itself. Vidal’s most substantial body of work is his seven-book series “Narratives of Empire,” a chronicle of the United States tinged with the Vidalian view that the nation has morphed since its inception from republic to empire. Often, Vidal’s heterodoxy affected the quality of his work; as Christopher Hitchens noted in his attack on Vidal in Vanity Fair, by the time The Golden Age was published in 2000, Vidal’s obsession with conspiracy pertaining to Pearl Harbor had overtaken him. But Burr-his novel on the founding of the republic-and Lincoln are unsurpassed in the field of American historical fiction. Ever the contrarian, Vidal made his Lincoln a leader with dictatorial tendencies who would suspend habeas corpus and lead the North into sanguinary conflict to keep the republic together. Vidal deployed verifiable quotations to make his case that the Great Emancipator did not care much for emancipation at all: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” Nonetheless, his portrait of Lincoln the man is affectionate and affecting. At the book’s conclusion, Charles Schuyler, Vidal’s fictional interloper, asks Lincoln’s secretary John Hay where he would place Lincoln amongst all the presidents past. The voice is clearly Vidal’s: Oh, I would place him first. Mr. Lincoln had a far greater and more difficult task than Washington’s. You see, the Southern states had every Constitutional right to go out of the Union. But Lincoln said no. Lincoln said this Union can never be broken. Now, that was a terrible responsibility for one man to take. But he took it, knowing he would be obliged to fight the greatest war in human history, which he did, and which he won. So he not only put the Union back together again, but he made an entirely new country, and all of it in his own image. Vidal considered his best books to be the ones he labelled his “fantasies” or “inventions,” including Duluth-set in an American town where the lines between real life and fiction are indistinct-as well as Kalki and Live from Golgotha. The most famous of these, and the best, was Myra Breckinridge, starring a transgender protagonist who wallows in the golden age of Hollywood and takes revenge upon mankind in brutally lustful ways. I defy anyone who opens Myra Breckinridge and reads its opening lines-I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess-not to press on and revel in the humor and verve. But all of Vidal’s novels, even those deemed creations of his imagination, are grounded in reality in one way or another and seek to propagate a political or historical argument. In the case of Myra Breckinridge, Vidal spoke of fluidity between the genders, advancing a point he had made before that there is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person, merely, as he put it, “same-sex sex and other-sex sex.” In addition to politics and sex, Vidal was preoccupied by religion, and in his magnum opus, Julian, Vidal chronicles the life of that 4th-century Roman emperor, who attempted to restore pluralism and Hellenistic values to an empire which had began to promote Christianity throughout its territories. Ever the patrician, republican, and secularist, Vidal took the side of Caesar in the novel, granting him some passionately-articulated anti-clerical polemics: Is one to believe that a thousand generations of men, among them Plato and Homer, are lost because they did not worship a Jew who was supposed to be god? A man not born when the world began? I am afraid it takes extraordinary self-delusion to believe such things. Again, however, Vidal was coming back to the great subject, the one to which he devoted his life: the United States. In electing to tell a story of Roman decline and fall, Vidal was sending a warning shot, expressing his opinion that his country of birth was beginning to go the same way, abandoning its democratic and republican values for the sake of empire. He may not have always been right on this point, but his novels remain essential. Watch him battle Buckley and Mailer, and hear him trash Capote. But read the books-it is where the best of Vidal is to be found.

@grahamnoble4887 4 года назад

What a very ugly sentence.

@TheEleatic 3 года назад

@@sg-yq8pm RU-vid is a pile of manure where no ideas flower.

@annettelf7644 3 года назад

Stop projecting

@thom6746 Год назад

You're right. He was a bitch.

@chrisgreene2405 4 года назад

This is the age of the image. We have moved into a post literary society.

@chrisgreene2405 4 года назад

@S C Print media books were far more subversive than the image society now

@BlueBaron3339 4 года назад

Yes, Chris, and Vidal said as much long before he died, noting that he was a member of a profession that no longer exists. It's sad because, almost by definition, people who read are more intelligent than those who do not. The mental activity of creating an entire world, images and all, in your mind based solely on an arrangement of glyphs, and to hear the underlying musical score contained in the delivery of the written syllables may be a capacity the human brain can do without. It can survive. But it is in an objectively inferior brain.

@chrisgreene2405 4 года назад

@Inge Fossen Great answer. Well done

@chris-ki6ic 2 месяца назад

Truman Capote on Vidal: "I rather liked Gore. He was amusing, bright, and always very vinegary, and we had a lot of things in common. His mother was an alcoholic, and my mother was an alcoholic. His mother’s name was Nina, and my mother’s name was Nina. Those things sound superficial, but they’re not. And we were both terribly young and at the same time very knowledgeable about what we were doing. We used to sit at those little lunches at the Plaza, and he would explain to me exactly, in the greatest detail-he was very methodical about it-how he was going to manage his life. He planned to become the grand old man of American letters, the American Somerset Maugham. He wanted to write popular books, make lots of money, and have a house on the Riviera, just as Maugham did. He always used to say, ‘Longevity’s the answer. If you live long enough, everything will turn your way.’ I would say, ‘Gore, you will do it all if you really want to.’ And he did, too. He got it all except for one thing: he will never be as popular as Maugham was, and none of his books will ever be as good or readable as the best of Maugham. He has no talent, except for writing essays. He has no interior sensitivity-he can’t put himself into someone else’s place-and except for Myra Breckinridge, he never really found his voice. Anybody could have written Julian or Burr.”

@simonagree4070 Месяц назад

Capote's comments about Vidal are more perceptive and considered than Vidal's comments about Capote.

@juanvelez8564 5 лет назад

The lack of control over the volume of sound for this video is distressingly painful. It shifts without warning from almost inaudible to loudspeaker. Awful.

@kamuelalee 4 года назад

Turned it off halfway through

@SuperGuanine 4 года назад

Yes, painful but we don't know what the techs had to face. I'm just glad that this video was produced.

@joes.8544 6 лет назад

I can't help but disagree with the Vidal naysayers here. Capote was never any great shakes - like Kerouac and Henry Miller and Burroughs and Hemingway, most people love the myth of Capote more than his actual writing. With those writers it always boils down to some personality cult where the lifestyle is envied rather than the literature. 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' has only stood the test of time because of Audrey Hepburn's charisma in the film. And 'In Cold Blood''s legacy is the risible genre of true crime. Vidal was complementary of 'Gatsby', he only said the rest of Fitzgerald's work suffered. Gore's essays are second to none and his historical fiction - of which 'Lincoln', 'Burr', 'Julian', and 'Creation' are the best - only inspires one to dig deeper into history and the myth-machine behind it. I actually like Vidal's bitterness - he was competitive and displayed it within a hilarious language of catty machismo. I miss the great literary feuds of yesteryear which mattered once because the stakes were high and we took all that talent for granted. Give me Vidal vs. Buckley or Mailer any day over some actor promoting their latest movie with some bland anecdote. A little hate meant a little fire in the belly, a passion for artistic worth. An acerbic Vidal was him at his best!

@TheRedverb 6 лет назад

Josip Serdarevic, Acerbity, and complete disrespect in handling the name of the deceased (as shown concerning Capote) are immature faults at best and evidence for a depraved heart at worse. Gore was an able enough writer, but would have been much better had he taken notes from the finer points of some of the authors work that he over criticizes in these clips.

@bendigeidfranemmanueljones4546 6 лет назад

Deceased is no achievement as yet.

@mhikl4484 6 лет назад

Hemingway! I read his FWTBT twice. Once in my early teens and then in my thirties, just to make sure, Boring slop. Indeed, Vidal's 'bitterness' or 'indignation' is insightful as well as just plain fun.

@Alexander-tj2dn 6 лет назад

¿Risible? In cold blood is one ofr tjhe best books I have read in my life.

@yarazooom 6 лет назад

EXCEPT CAPOTE change the whole genre of ''literature'' with IN CoILD BLOOD a journalistic biography of america's future...345 mass shooting in 2017...he pinpointed the next ''ethos'' of american madness

@imperialtimes9136 4 года назад

His political philosophy and commentary are the legacy that we should remember him by. His ego was his Achilles' heel in breaking the media's propaganda monopoly - every obituary and report on Vidal in his later years highlights the ego and controversial nature, obscuring the fact that when it came to understanding world affairs he was almost always on the money. They hated him for calling the game out, and his legacy has been muted for it.

@clownnookie 6 лет назад

Authors on Carson. Dick Cavett spending a whole show interviewing a writer. Lost times...

@termsofusepolice 6 лет назад

Now the most we can hope for is seven minutes with "greats" like J.K. Rowling. Sigh...

@dagnabbit6187 6 лет назад

termsofusepolice Are you one of those who think JK Rowling is overrated ? I love fantasy writers and the Various genres of Fantasy . I speak with caution because you may be one of those Elite literary snobs but I read the first two Harry Potter books and they didn’t do it for me. She has a good imagination but to me the prose style just didn’t ignite . There was one, some fan said I had to read , and it starts with 40 pages of a Quidditch match . No thanks I replied !

@termsofusepolice 6 лет назад

Dag - I put "greats" in quotation marks to indicate sarcasm. Rowling isn't remotely in the same league as some of the literary titans name checked in this vid. But, in her defense, I have to think she would be the first to admit this.

@dagnabbit6187 6 лет назад

termsofusepolice Yes but so called “ Greats “ whom I call the Cliff Notes Authors are sometimes dreadful and dreadful bores and many popular Authors like Stephen King will sometimes throw one back at those who love them and scorn him . He does it with horrific effect and he has a point. Literati can sit in their holier than thou caves but they basically are full of shit with their upturned noses and their discussion of James Joyce and forget it is basically about Storytelling

@ruiferro4160 3 года назад

Agreed but intelectuals are on podcasts today. Available at anytime, even on phones. Why do we still complain?

@Offmedication 6 лет назад

"And don't get me started on that Shakespeare guy.....flouncing about in those silly pants scribbling dull boring plays with that quill pen in his ink-stained fingers that nobody reads" -Gore Vidal. 1973

@Offmedication 6 лет назад

He seems to despise all writers not named "Gore Vidal" LOL

@ricardocantoral7672 6 лет назад

FilmsFor SMARTpeople Vidal was a hater but it's apparent to me he nursed these feuds for the sake of attracting attention.

@dagnabbit6187 6 лет назад

Probably but they were entertaining and why not ? Yet he did stay prolific and publish and I think his plays Visit to A Small Planet and The Best Man are as good as anything the " Giants " have done .

@daregorton8359 6 лет назад

😂😂😂

@JeffRebornNow 6 лет назад

FilmsForSMART, Vidal was obviously being facetious with his remark about Shakespeare, if he even said it, which I've never read. If you'd read his autobiography you'd know he adored Shakespeare and read all his plays. He fell in love with Shakespeare at the age of 10 when he went to see Mickey Rooney as Puck in 'A Mid-Summer Night's Dream,' and soon after started reading all of his plays. He talks about this extensively, actually. He thought it was a sad state of affairs that the kids of today weren't more interested in Shakespeare.

@Cryptonymicus 6 лет назад

The Don Rickles of letters.

@saxcoltrane 6 лет назад

No way. Rickles was actually a decent guy.

@augustomontes8202 4 года назад

lmao

@syourke3 6 лет назад

Vidal was a brilliant essayist. If he never wrote a line of fiction, he would still be a significant literary figure based on his essays. When he writes about literature, public affairs and American history, he is always brilliant and thought provoking. His television feud with William Buckley at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention was one of the greatest moments in the history of television. Many accuse him of being "bitchy". I think he was simply unafraid of voicing his honest opinions about other writers and public figures. I agree with his judgment on politics and literature and I commend him for his integrity, wit and courage.

@tiffsaver 6 лет назад

+Steven Yourke AGREED. I found his responses and interviews on historical and celebrity figures to be spot on. What others described as 'bitchy,' I found hilarious, pointed, and invariably accurate. When he died, we lost a past master of the spoken word.

@tiffsaver 6 лет назад

LOL... "authoritarian nutjob." Once again, Vidal got it right.

@TheClassicWorld 5 лет назад

Well, clearly, these people are crazy. I hope that answers your question, Avid.

@justorigores 5 лет назад

TRADUCCIÓN AL ESPAÑOL Vidal fue un brillante ensayista. Si nunca escribió una línea de ficción, aún sería una figura literaria significativa basada en sus ensayos. Cuando escribe sobre literatura, asuntos públicos e historia estadounidense, siempre es brillante y estimulante. Su disputa televisiva con William Buckley en la Convención del Partido Demócrata de 1968 fue uno de los mejores momentos de la historia de la televisión. Muchos lo acusan de ser una"putica". Creo que simplemente no tenía miedo de expresar sus opiniones sinceras acerca de otros escritores y figuras públicas. Estoy de acuerdo con su juicio sobre política y literatura y lo felicito por su integridad, ingenio y coraje.

@jefolson6989 4 года назад

agree with you. I enjoyed LINCOLN but his brilliance is as a social critic and political commentator. He would have been a feared book, film or theater critic had he chosen. I just find him a fascinating talk show guest- up there with Orson Welles, Peter Ustinov, and Oliver Sacks.

@troyevitt2437 6 лет назад

The video editing is all wrong.

@BookClubDisaster Год назад

Authors are even better at dissing each other than rappers.

@sparkswain2820 4 года назад

I never dreamt Vidal would have watched "The Fly" movie. Hilarious!

@MacJaxonManOfAction 4 года назад

It may have been the 1958 version he was referring to. It has the "Help me!" scene.

@sparkswain2820 4 года назад

@@MacJaxonManOfAction That's the version that I had in mind.

@attilathejung4801 4 года назад

It's not the one you're thinking of.

@NxDoyle 5 лет назад

The one thing that sticks with me about Vidal and Williams is their taking turns target shooting on a Palm Beach patio with JFK. When Jack's turn came, Williams whispered to Vidal, "Get that ass!" to which Vidal replied, "Bird, you can't cruise our next president."

@JohnMoseley 5 лет назад

Seven times Gore Vidal went FULL BEAST MODE on other writers!

@stacyblue1980 5 лет назад

I didnt find myself getting uptight about this. Maybe because Mr. Vidal was witty. Maybe because I remember my mother mentioning him a few times and that was a surprise. Maybe because Vidal gives us some things to think about. He is honest. I admire some of these writers. Especially Tennessee Williams. But I can see where Vidal stood here. And when he was speaking about the Kennedys- I was smiling ! I will always respect Gore Vidal for THAT.

@brettstreicher2548 6 лет назад

"And then he would go into hypochondria." 😂😂😂

@ListenToBigFace 5 лет назад

I often think of this video when I’m reading one of Gore Vidal’s classic novels

@IFStravinsky 4 года назад

as Homer Simpson said of him: He hates everything!

@bcdside 2 года назад

I think Frasier Crane said this.

@882me 5 лет назад

Vonnegut! my favorite author, here with the man whose words never allowed me joy. Hmm. And so it goes.

@sambhavsingh7415 2 года назад

Vonnegut would have probably laughed at his jabs tbh.

@iconoclastvituperations9587 5 лет назад

whenever you quote someone out of context, you should include a link to the full discussion or whatever you borrowed

@cliffordhodge1449 5 лет назад

Just for the record, La Follette was Wisconsin, not Minnesota. Same region, though.

@jaredt113 2 года назад

People so often allow themselves, even now, to become enraged by the barbs of Gore Vidal, but I can't help but find them hilarious. Here you have a man whose sense of his own literary importance is so turgid and swollen - like a drowned corpse unrecognizable to the living person that once inhabited it - that to hear him place himself above the likes of Bellow or Hemingway or Tennessee Williams is at once unsurprising to anyone who's heard him speak and unbelievable to anyone who's read his prose. Don't get me wrong, Gore is one of the great writers of historical fiction perhaps ever. No one, save probably E.L. Doctorow, reproduces time and place in America with as much exactitude as Gore. And he is (besides Mark Twain) my favorite American wit who ever lived. But the idea that anything he ever wrote approached the emotional depth or complexity of Dangling Man or The Old Man and the Sea or The Glass Menagerie is laughable.

@niallmcmahon8571 9 месяцев назад

I love Vidal but his comment on Hemingway 'he knew nothing about literature' is so weirdly ironic because that was one of his main gifts, he was a pure writer who wasn't copying anyone's style, wasn't too concerned about any writing 'school', but he lived his life fully and found a voice from himself not from others and was a true writer and an original. Sun also rises is better than all of Vidal's writings put together, you could see that after only one paragraph. And vidal was a great writer but sometimes no matter how hard you work to be the best you have to admit that someone, who may not have put the hours into their 'erudition' ot studying of the craft as you have, is just better than you. It happens all the time, in life, in sports for example, Usain Bolt, Maradona, just better but not the most hard working, not the most 'deserving' but still the best. Like Byron or Mozart, just a guy that had god given talent. That was Vidal's great weakness in not admitting that, he says himself he wrote partly to appeal to the masses. Hemingway I don't think ever did that, he was motivated by things that hurt him and wrote about that

@bradhaynes 6 лет назад

I agree with his assessment of Al Franken. 😂

@robvangessel3766 4 года назад

I'm 180 degrees about Al.

@darkheartlightsoul 4 года назад

For sure Al turned out a douche

@saulgoodman7858 5 лет назад

Dude has Skatalites playing in the background. He really knew how to throw a party didn't he.

@dextergilford1498 5 лет назад

I thought I was hearing things at first...Great catch!

@acgogoacgogo8854 6 лет назад

Of the three pictured above my favorite fiction: Vidal: "Julian" and "Burr" "Myra Breckenridge (for laughs)" and his essays in "United States" Vonnegut: "Slaughterhouse Five," and the sublime "Mother Night" Mailer: "Ancient Evenings" best imaginary ancient Egypt ever written

@allertonoff4 6 лет назад

@ Acgogo Acgogo: - Yeah .. check out 'MYRON' too amigo .. f^ckin Hilarious, OUTRAGEOUS ! .. thought i was gonna have a brain haemorrhage, was laughing so much .. sly ole fox .. Hypermega Hero ! :) ... these PC halfwits could never comprehend him in milleniae, just listen to 'em, wow .. they'll soon be happy .... under sharia law.

@luciancorvus9992 5 лет назад

Ah Vidal …… the "Hedda Hopper" of modern literature.

@seltic13 4 года назад

Sir or madam, your edit is gangsta AF

@bh1935 5 лет назад

the hitchens/vidal scene, what documentary is that from?

@MUFFINHEAD1985 4 года назад

Vidal Usa I think it's called or Vidal America

@stevend.bennett427 6 лет назад

Vidal is right up there with Sydney Sheldon and Barbara Cartland.

@chodeshadar18 5 лет назад

Bwaaaaaahahaha! Watch it you're dripping sarcasm all over your shirt!

@MrUndersolo 4 года назад

That was fucking funny!

@johnllewlyndavies222 Год назад

He's a footnote to an unread book.

@HankAstral 5 лет назад

I read his ‘Narratives of Empire’ series at uni. Brilliant, enlightening, bold. I could go on. He is a literary giant in many ways

@VictrolaJazz 5 лет назад

Hemingway had it over Mailer in that he was 24 in 1923 where Mailer was 20 in 1943. Hemingway got to see and hear the Roaring 20's, Mailer experienced the dreariness of the bopadoodle 40's, hubba hubba.

@circlesinthenight3141 6 лет назад

Gore is a critical thinker we need more people like that

@greggasiorowski4025 5 лет назад

New atheists types get offended because their politically fickle godless idol got diss burned.

@meshzzizk 4 года назад

The Metallica cameo was a nice touch

@DJS11811 5 лет назад

La Follette was from Wisconsin.

@mysterytrain3 6 лет назад

Buckley was restrained in his attack on Vidal, who knew he wasn't going to get roundhoused on national television. But I find it amusing that he criticized Hemingway at a distance, like a coward. He's like Mailer: a pompous windbag (excuse the cliche). Dick Cavett's brilliant remark to Mailer, who was being interviewed on his show, also applies to Vidal. He said--and I'm paraphrasing badly--"Shall I bring out another chair for your enormous intellect?"

@MANHATTANBEEFMAN 6 лет назад

Cavett was never - ever - brilliant...at anything.

@huddi94 6 лет назад

Man Hattan You however surely are. Thank you for your contribution.

@johannbrandstatter7419 5 лет назад

Opinions are opinions.I enjoy some of the comments he made. There is more than just a grain of truth in them. What set Gore Vidal apart, are his political convictions and the way he delivers and bases his judgments on. Gore Vidal a man that was not afraid to speak up, write up, even if it went completely against the grain and the politics of the day. This conviction never left him or failed him. I respect him for that. A lot of the writer he judged were rather of the wishy=washy type and glorified by a press who knew no better. Christopher Hitchens ? A turncoat if you ever wished to see one...Negates with his behaviour all he has ever written before. Vale Gore Vidal !

@johnjay599 6 лет назад

Here's another witty remark I found in a box I carry with me.

@isaklytting5795 5 лет назад

He was a great observer, a free-thinker, and consistent in his politics throughout his life, and wasn't trying to get into the favours of people with money, unlike 99,9% of the other people around him, who, as soon as they get an "in" to people with power (money), they are never heard from again, or have a complete change of their "principles", thereby proving they had no principles.

@ricardocantoral7672 6 лет назад

Gore Vidal loathed Hemingway ? GOOD GOD ! MY WORLD HAS COLLAPSED ! DOES NOT COMPUTE !

@ricardocantoral7672 5 лет назад

@Jose Antonio Quintana He was a celebrity for the most part but one thing I will give him, he recognized, to a certain degree, the tyranny of our government.

@Wa7edmenalnass 5 лет назад

I was waiting to hear something about Faulkner to close the video and I didn't so this video is alright.

@enolux 6 лет назад

have to say, he's right about a lot of them, with the exception of Hitchens, whom, despite the contrarian snippets, he was openly fond of for many years.

@jameselias8955 5 лет назад

That's Kurt Vonnegut at 4:45 if anyone's interested. Also, Vidal's a twat. Funny video

@paineite 5 лет назад

Capote: "The zircon in the diadem of American literature." LOL !!!

@docmagnus 5 лет назад

Capote versus Vidal: What a catfight!

@greggasiorowski4025 5 лет назад

Me Yow! 😾

@sparky6086 4 года назад

A better fight is Gore Vidal vs William F Buckley. It took place on TV in 1968.

@CLASSICALFAN100 5 лет назад

Here's GV's finest hour, in the 1968 debate vs Bill Buckley: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2GR3pclm1qk.html

@edydon 3 года назад

Its easy to be beguiled and charmed by Vidal's snide witticisms - until you think "Exactly what has he done? What's his jewel in the diadem of literature? Myra Breckinridge?"

@bradleyeric14 5 лет назад

His opinions on Fitzgerald and Hemingway follow those of Mary McCarthy expressed years earlier.

@jackwright2495 6 лет назад

I wish you would have cared enough about this video to equalize the sound levels!

@XX-gy7ue 6 лет назад

whatever the opinions expressed here - it's sad that articulate guests are seldom seen on talk-shows anymore !

@drparnassus2867 6 лет назад

The audio about Mailer from 3:26 onwards is the interview Vidal gave KCRW after Mailer's death in 2007, and he's actually quite generous about him: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xcj1dW0hNmo.html.

@jamesvignali6074 6 лет назад

I consider Gore Vidal America's Expert on the Fur Trade. My favorite Gore Vidal Books are the Fur Trading Chronicles.

@DCFunBud 5 лет назад

So true about Jackie. John Kennedy could not really afford her.

@darbyheavey406 10 месяцев назад

Hemingway sold more books in a day than Vidal sold in his life. Vidal was a born snob.

@8woldy8 5 лет назад

LaFollette was from Wisconsin.

@andreasarambasic7238 6 лет назад

I mean I don't agree with everything, but considering Hemingway: he is in fact overrated. People praise and honor him too much cause of his name and legacy.

@wickfields 6 лет назад

They use an image of Oliver Stone as he assesses Hemingway.

@yarazooom 6 лет назад

kids today!

@ModernPlague 6 лет назад

Wick Fields --- It's making fun of Stone's haircut for looking like Hemingway.

@wickfields 6 лет назад

Ah, I see.

@kevincarrucan5328 4 года назад

Wow - high brow click bate? Many thanks for sharing.

@robertforbes450 3 года назад

I love Gore Vidal So cool He is one of my idols

@brachio1000 4 года назад

The fly caught the smell of Vidal's historical novels on his hands.

@donfarlan214 5 лет назад

Notice how serious and redicolous it all seems just for one person to be somebody other than nobody like he's basicly addressing

@aknsd2009 6 лет назад

Mr. Gore Vidal, just a slight correction, La Follette was a Senator from WI not Minnesota.

@latequilera22 6 лет назад

He's right about Norman Mailer. Spot on.

@stefanijoanneangelinagerma3862 5 лет назад

I love writers with strong opinions.

@bhatkat 6 лет назад

Only reason I clicked this one being to check out the comments, plenty of all or nothing stuff, black and white just as I expected. Just curious if there are any writers who don't hate each other, this must be the case seeing they are still fairly abundant species, heard he did get along with Tennessee Williams but that was a different context.

@madaleine0n864 4 года назад

Gore Vidal......you couldn't out wit him, out subtlety him...ect. We are all made listeners........he could spit out nomenclature,history,locations, film directorship....... great teacher.

@ronwilliams357 5 лет назад

4:43 nice clip of Vidal and Vonnegut chatting.

@ramonalejandrosuare 5 лет назад

Bob La Follette was from Wisconsin, not from Minnesota.

@Perchumovic 2 года назад

I love this video so much.

@JonFrumTheFirst 5 лет назад

Evidently, the commenters here have never read literary criticism - or any art criticism at all. It is traditional in criticism to cut to the bone when a jab would do. Calm down - no one died here - not even your binky. The truth is that - as always - much writing that was seen as great in its time will be forgotten. You all know Dickens, but his equals of his day are largely considered unreadable now. So it will be with these guys.

@GreenGretel 4 года назад

His great disappointment in the current state of Minnesota is what gets me the most. 😂

@Hugatree1 6 лет назад

Thank you for this incredible tribute to a truly brilliant man!

@thehotyounggrandpas8207 7 лет назад

Miau! Claws out!

@mirandac8712 5 лет назад

La Follette's Wisconsin.

@henrymiller8849 8 месяцев назад

Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" crushes Hemingway's version 🎵

@jaydubya3698 6 лет назад

Here's the problem with Vidal's criticism of Hemingway. He may believe that EH was an awful writer...that's his opinion. But 200 years from now, people will still be reading "The Old Man and the Sea" and crying at the end of it, they will read short stories like "Indian Camp" and gasp or "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and think deeply about nothingness. People won't be doing the same thing after reading Gore Vidal. So go ahead, hate on Hemingway. But the facts are the facts.

@Pstephen 5 лет назад

Hemingway is so mannered and humourless. I disliked The Old Man and the Sea intensely, and I love Vidal's essays.

@joker-mo8cb 3 года назад

@@Pstephen who?

@frisco21 5 лет назад

Vidal and Hitchens eventually fell out. Hitchens later famously --- and perhaps apocryphally --- described Gore as the Thomas Kinkade of authors.

@ricardocantoral7672 4 года назад

"Thomas Kinkade of authors". ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-O3id-Fb8ooY.html

@omololuolalekan 6 лет назад

Vidal's essays are the best of the best!

@sueblack5794 6 лет назад

not really. Capote the one he is mocking x10 better.

@rkrw576 6 лет назад

I used to think that, but on re-reading them they didn't stand the test of time and learning.

@carlosbarbosa9062 6 лет назад

sue black something Gore Vidal did not want people to know is he was one of the screenwriters for Caligula lol

@Adkturn 6 лет назад

Vidal sued to have his name removed from the film credits after Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione (and the film's bankroller) turned it into a soft porn B-movie.

@Adkturn 6 лет назад

+sue black you have no idea what you're talking about.

@ramlathers8182 4 года назад

Gore may have seemed "bitter" in his old age but I assure you he was essentially the same at 30 as he was at 86, his caustic wit and BS detector all in excellent working order, dropping truth bombs all over the place.